I do not want to pass this NSCoder object (I'm not sure what it does and it makes my code messy). Could you post an example of how to cleanly subclass a UIView and then how you would initialize it in another class?

I'd really love to extend my UIView classes to have some cool effects like drop shadows, auto scaling, and lots of other goods without having to create subviews to handle all that (like UIImageViews inside UIScrollViews)

Ok great, I think I was getting confused between the required vs the override. Thank you.
– AggressorOct 7 '14 at 21:50

Helpful but passively insulting at the same time. Why not just help? Those who are learners don't need judgmental comments like this "Cannot imagine what the problem is..." One up vote, and one down vote.
– drew..Feb 15 at 13:28